Page 99 of Love You
She hadn’t committed to anything but that was Win for you. Presumptuous and infuriating and . . . Mm. He was kissing her and she couldn’t think. Her body was too busy responding to his with a throbbing ache that set her on fire. They were fogging up the windshield when his cell rang. He glanced at the caller ID on his dashboard phone holder. They both recognized the number.
“What?” Win answered, trying to catch his breath.
Darcy couldn’t make out the other end of the conversation. Win listened while TJ rattled on. She pulled her shirt down and flipped open the visor mirror to check her hair, her pulse still pounding. Darcy loved Win Garner. There it was, pure and simple. Like a million women before her, she loved him.
And against her better judgment she was going to take the leap and put her faith in him not to make mincemeat of her heart.
“Madison called.” Win put the phone back on the dash. “She wants me to come to Santa Clara and close the deal.”
“What—what about me?” She wanted to be part of winning the FlashTag account as much as anyone else.
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, leaving her hanging. “She just wants me.”
She let out a mirthless laugh. “Of course she does. She wants in your pants and once again I’m getting edged out . . . of getting the account.” Edged out of getting Win.
He sat up straight. “What do you mean ‘once again’? I’ve never edged you out of anything. We’re equal on this.”
She noted that he wasn’t denying the fact that Madison was hot for him.
“I’ll be the guide in charge,” he continued. “Corporate team building is my specialty. She wants me to meet the staff. It seems pretty reasonable that I should visit the company, get a sense of the culture and the employees. But if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”
“No—no, that would be ridiculous.” GA needed the account as badly as she wanted her promotion. They’d just been offered a second chance and she’d be insane, not to mention selfish, to put the kibosh on it. “You should go.”
“And you should trust me.”
“I do.” At least she wanted to. With all her heart.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Win had pretty much all he could take of Madison De Wolk and FlashTag. Everyone at the company was great. Friendly—Madison too friendly—accommodating, and down-to-earth. But Win had never been a city or a suburban dweller and Silicon Valley was a lot of sprawl and smog. And he missed Darcy. He’d only been gone two days and he missed her like crazy, which was a million kinds of weird.
Never before had he been that hooked on a woman. Sure, he’d had his fair share of cravings that kept him seeing the same woman for a while but not anything like this. This was a bone-deep yearning. Not just for sex, but to hear her voice, her laugh, just to be near her.
The good news was it appeared that GA was going to get the account and tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, he’d be going home.
TJ had called a dozen times to check up on him, which was par for the course for his big brother, the king of control freaks. Darcy had been caught up with getting her grandmother settled in at home and hadn’t had time to talk much. Hilde was weak but the prognosis for a full recovery, promising. Thank God. When he got home he was planning to go over to the house and grill them dinner to celebrate.
“Is your lobster good?” Madison picked at hers, making Win wonder if she even liked seafood.
“It’s great.” Though the dim lighting was driving him berserk. He liked to see what he was eating but he assumed the votive candles were supposed to be romantic. Probably Madison’s idea.
The restaurant was owned by a big-deal chef, had high, open-beam ceilings and interesting structural objects on the wall, a sort of abstract interpretation of the sea floor. At the entrance, there was a huge built-in fish tank. Everything was “farm-to-table” and they served two kinds of butter—goat and cow—in handcrafted dishes with warm, crusty bread. It had a prix fixe menu with a price tag as big as California. And yet, people made reservations a year in advance. Madison apparently knew one of the investors who still had to pull strings to get them in. He would’ve been happy with the Vietnamese place down the street from his hotel.
At least FlashTag was footing the bill. And Madison wasn’t sparing any expense, including a bottle of Screaming Eagle, Second Flight for seven hundred bucks. He checked the menu to make sure it wasn’t a typo. Nope.
“Sorry, our angel investors would look askance at me dropping a few grand on the actual Cabernet,” Madison said.
“What’s this?” It was red, that much he knew.
“It’s a combination of grapes. Merlot and Cabernet Franc, I think. The original Screaming Eagle is just Cab and it’s thousands of dollars.”
Insane. He’d rather spend the money on a vacation.
“Taste it.” She made sure to touch his hand as she pushed his stemware closer.
All night, she’d started in again with the flirting and overt touching. A few times, she’d posed with him for selfies.
She just didn’t get that this . . . them . . . wasn’t happening. It seemed pretty unprofessional for the CEO of a major company to continue to persist. Then again, social media start-ups weren’t like the rest of corporate America. He’d read somewhere that the executives of a lot of these outfits sat around all day, smoking pot. Not your normal breed of suits. In fact, the dudes mostly wore jeans and hoodies and never seemed to shave. Except for the shaving part, the women dressed pretty much the same way. Some wore T-shirts under blazers. Almost everyone had an Apple watch or a Fitbit and a messenger bag strapped across their chest. It was a little like a clone bank.
